Stockholm // Current

Paul Krugman wins Nobel Economics Prize

American Paul Krugman won the Nobel economics prize on Monday for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity.

ebindelglass
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Opinions mixed on NHL expansion into Europe

Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk has no doubt that - sooner rather than later - the National Hockey League will be expanding... more

GeoffNI
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World Water Week demands halt to food wastage

Scientists and experts from around the world have warned that global food wastage must be halved by 2025 to meet the challenges of... more

lecoke
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Creative Recycling: 747 Turned into Hostel

Jumbo jets are magnificent machines, but when they go to die they bake in the desert, perhaps get converted into houses, or... more

love_is_my_religion
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Woman goes down baggage chute at Swedish airport

An elderly woman misunderstood instructions while checking in at Sweden's main airport and was whisked down a baggage chute... more

luckysnorkel
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World water crisis underlies world food crisis

The world's supplies of clean, fresh water cannot sustain today's "profligate" use and inadequate management, which have brought shrinking food supplies and rising food costs to most countries, WWF Director General James Leape told the opening session of World Water Week in Stockholm today.

"Behind the world food crisis is a global freshwater crisis, expected to rapidly worsen as climate change impacts intensify," Leape said. "Irrigation-fed agriculture provides 45 percent of the world's food supplies, and without it, we could not feed our planet's population of six billion people."

Leape warns that many of the world's irrigation areas are highly stressed and drawing more water than rivers and groundwater reserves can sustain, especially in view of climate change. At the same time, he said, freshwater food reserves are declining in the face of the quickening pace of dam construction and unsustainable water extractions from rivers.

At a time when billions of people live without access to safe drinking water or suffer ill health due to poor sanitation, when food producers battle biofuel producers for land and water resources, and when global climate change is altering the overall water balance, 2,500 water experts are gathered this week at the Stockholm International Fairs and Congress Center to craft solutions to these problems.

World Water Week is an annual event co-ordinated by the Stockholm International Water Institute. This year's conference has the overall theme of Progress and Prospects on Water: For A Clean and Healthy World with Special Focus on Sanitation" in keeping with the UN declaration of 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation.
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According to an announcement here the amount of people without potable water is going down. This is good news, and is in part due to organizations such as Water Partners International, Water Aid, and other organizations coming together in the water justice movement to bring potable water to more areas of the world that need it most.

It is an encouraging sign, but the work is far from over. Glaciers worldwide continue to melt threatening the water supplies for millions of people as freshwater lakes and rivers continue to decline due to a combination of climate change/global warming, overusage and pollution. The measures outlined by the forum need to be seriously instituted instead of just being talk to carry over for the next year.

As population rises freshwater resources will become even scarcer due to climate changes, pollution, and corporatization, so conservation and more efficient irrigation practices worldwide must be instituted. It is then ironic to see the water fountains going outside the sign to this forum. I wonder if they realized that.

Anyway, I know this issue is not "sexy" and some think it redundant. Well, sorry, but it is the most important environmental issue and crisis we are facing in our world, and the only way people will know about it is for those with the passion to get the message out to persevere in doing so.The world's supplies of clean, fresh water cannot sustain today's "profligate" use and inadequate management,... more